An electron beam welding process may employ a vacuum environment to prevent a beam of electrons formed for the welding process from dispersing. In such case, the vacuum environment may be created in a welding chamber within which a workpiece is disposed. A filler material, typically in the form of a filler wire, may be placed adjacent to or over the workpiece, and the beam of electrons may travel through the welding chamber and toward the workpiece. As the electrons impact the workpiece and the filler material, heat is created, which melts the workpiece and filler material to create the weld joint.
Although the aforementioned electron beam welding process produces adequate weld joints, certain aspects of the process may be improved. In particular, because the vacuum environment is formed in the welding chamber, the process takes place in a finite space. Accordingly, in some cases, an apparatus for feeding the filler wire towards the beam of electrons, may be too large in size for disposal within the welding chamber. Hence, the filler wire may be fed into the welding chamber through a port in a wall of the welding chamber, while the apparatus remains in a nearby non-vacuum environment. However, extending the filler wire through the port so that it extends between the vacuum environment and the non-vacuum environment may increase a likelihood of gas leakage into the vacuum environment.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have an improved sealing system for preventing gas leakage when a wire extends between two environments pressurized at different magnitudes, such as between vacuum and non-vacuum environments. In addition, it is desirable for the sealing system to be capable of sealing a vacuum environment to maintain the vacuum environment at about 0.0001 Torr. Moreover, it is desirable for the improved sealing system to be simple and inexpensive to implement and capable of being retrofitted into various existing systems in which an improved sealing system may be useful. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the inventive subject matter will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the inventive subject matter and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the inventive subject matter.